Hilary Beauchamp, MBE

Hilary Beauchamp was born in Leeds where she attended Leeds College of Art.

She then went on to study printmaking at the Royal College of Art London.

Hilary was always interested in different kinds of creativity and her first job was as an assistant costume designer at the Royal Shakespeare Theatre Stratford.

She then started to lecture -time at Hammersmith College of Art, Harrow College of Art and Guildford College of Art. During this time she continued to draw and paint.

This continued for approximately 5 years until she decided to break away from the Art College system and began to work in the Education department of Holloway prison—intermittently linking this with work at Wormwood Scrubs and Pentonville prison.

During this time at Holloway her commitment to drawing and painting was reinforced—now combined with the visual and social aspects of her working environment. She began to write and draw situations from memory. She worked to broaden the inmates’ ability to develop their own creativity while minimising the negative aspects of the prison routine.

She determined to reform the creative side of the prisoners’ experience and she set up many initiatives that became part of the inmate’s lives – not only in the Education department but throughout the establishment. She arranged for exhibitions to decorate the walls of the corridors she organised murals on the walls of the mother and baby wing and on the ceiling in the dentists to distract patients during their treatment!

She employed tutors that taught crafts and different creative skills that could reach out to all abilities as well as holding art history tutorials.

A shop was opened in Holloway where inmates could sell their work with a percentage of the profits going to the charity “Victim Support “and Arthur Koestler charity. Before her retirement Hilary was awarded the “Teacher of the Year“ for London and the MBE for services to Art.